Newbie question about liveries

If you are playing on console then no, there is not any way to upload custom liveries.

If you are on PC then you can download mods from various sites that have custom liveries. If you wanted a livery with your own logo/design on it you would either need to talk a modder into creating it for you or learn to make the mod yourself.

I'm on PC. Now, those mods you mention, are they allowed by EA and therefore they provide a way to do it safely, or does it involve editing the game's files in a way that is not ideal? Because I wouldn't want to do anything that might make the game less stable or mess up something later.

Basically I want to be able to place a PNG with alpha channel (transparency) somewhere in the car.

Mods are allowed (you won't get banned), though not officially supported so they're not the easiest thing to use if you're not tech savvy. Also, because of this they only work offline as they game will try to "repair" itself if Steam/ EA App isn't set to offline mode.

I'm not sure of everything that goes into creating Mod's but I'm pretty sure it's a bit more complicated then just using photoshop to add a PNG to the image. I would ask around at Overtake.gg to see if anyone's willing to help with your project as they can probably advise you better than I can. F1 24, F1 23 & F1 2xxx Series | OverTake.gg (Formerly RaceDepartment)

Also here's a link to their downloads page where you can see some of the mods that people have already created. F1 24 | OverTake.gg (Formerly RaceDepartment)

Thanks. I'm tech savvy, although not in that particular aspect. I would like to learn how to do it, though, if it's not terribly time consuming.

I'll go ahead and check those links.